Alter Bridge - Watch over you

Hi guys,

This is not really an effort of mixing. First time I had a voice to work with, and it wasn’t really the focus of this project at the moment. I put a vocal rider on it, the mv2 from waves, the c4 multiband from waves, a little De-S and an L1 limiter.

This is the first time I record my voice, and put it online for others to hear, so its more of a “get it over with” thing :smiley: To brake my ice, lol. I’m not completely happy with the performance yet. I’m still practising, plus I only did a few overdubs, didn’t want to go to far with it for the first time.

I’ve been taking some singing lessons the last few months, so I thought I’d put it to the test :smiley: Enjoy listening/bashing, or vomiting if it tickles your uvula :smiley:

nice. The only thing I would suggest is that the fx you have on your vocal track is bringing out a bit too much of the high mids in your vocals. It’s almost as if I can hear the back of your throat coming into the mic. I’m guessing it’s your multiband compressor bringing out too much grit. It sounds good, it’s just too much.

Also, not a huge deal, but I can hear the noise kicking in and out when your vox come in.

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Thanks :slight_smile:

Yeah I know, that noise was bugging me ! :slight_smile: Not completely sure yet where it comes from, cause like I said, I didn’t really bother :stuck_out_tongue: That’s my next job. To find out if its indeed only cause of the fx’s ,or a problem in my chain. I think both a bit.

The high mids are indeed from my multiband I htink. Though, its also my voice a bit. It really cuts :smiley: But I did a little boost with multi, and let it pull a bit at the same time. I just saw that trick in a video, so mainly I’m being a copy machine atm. But I guess I can learn from that, cause people like you point me at my mistakes, THANKFULLY !

Good song! But that’s not what you wanted to hear. Your voice is fine. But somehow certain lower mid frequencies (1 tot 2 K?) are sometimes very dominant (depending on the note you sing) and in other places absent. Is this the effect of the multiband? I would use a dynamic eq to tame that. I use TDR Nova for such problems.

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If you want, I can upload a version where I do NO fx at all ? :slight_smile: I’ll do that tomorrow then.

And the thing is, to do the really high parts my voice kinda changes as well. Its not really belting, or I’m not sure how they call “facet voice” in English. But its somewhere in between.

If its the effect of the multiband I cant really say, cause I’m just touching the area of mixing vocals, so I barely have a clue what I’m doing. Still gotta figure that out. Today was more a guessing work :smiley:

I enjoyed your vocals, there’s a sense of unpolished for sure but a kinda cool rough edge to the sounds that I liked. I agree with the others about the harshness that comes through… I’d like to hear the raw tracks - there feels to me to be some unnecessary distortion happening… I’m wondering if you’re throwing too many fx at the track to easily identify what’s happening? There are some particularly nice moments, like your ‘ooooh’ bits … and calling for harmonies!

I’m getting a real limiter thing happening with the overall volumes… where the backing track really beefs up at the end from around 2.30, the voice seems to slip way back into the mix whereas before it was jumping quite a way in front of everything. So is there reverb happening on the vox? It sounded pretty dry…
Great to hear you singing!! More please… :slight_smile:

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From what I hear in the recording your voice sounds nice, good thing you got it over with already, pretty good!

You know, that’s the only thing that seems to hold your performance back, the idea you have that you’re not good enough, I’d suggest you treat this like you would with any singer who gets recording shy and just tell yourself to let go and give it your all for the take.
Not that I think you’re holding back consciously but I picture you as singing while thinking about your technique, and in that sense, you’re holding back… a little bit :slight_smile:

You thinned out your voice too much to my ears, I think you would benefit from a bump in 250 hz which should give your performance a more intimate feel and would complement the frailty and honesty you bring to the performance. In short, it should sound more natural and the flaws would give it character.

That’s my opinion anyway. Keep singing, its good!

Thanks :slight_smile: ! I will for sure. I really want to get this going, and comments like these will motivate me even more!

On the mixing end, There is a lot wrong I guess :stuck_out_tongue: i’l upload the dry vocals later today, I’m on the laptop now. But I really didn’t bother to much with the mix. I also noticed my voice falling back in the mix later in the song. I think its a few reasons. I just threw a voice rider on it, to get every thing a bit the same lvl, cause I was scared my high notes where going to TO loud, and I wanted it done fast. Like I ssaid, I wanted to get it out of the way with! And glad I did :smiley:

You’re absolutely right. I do it on many parts. I think its cause I’m not used to singing into a mic yet, and the confrontation with what your voice really sounds like. With guitar recording I used to have a bit of doubt as well in the beginning, cause you realise your mistakes, but I managed to let that go, and perform better. So I guess I should focus on trying to let go more with this as well. I’ll just trust you on that one with my next go :slight_smile:

Thanks for the comments and encouragement guys !
As soon as I get to it, I’ll take the technical advice in consideration as well !

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Pretty cool. Like your falsetto . I hear some hesitation on your first verse vocal starts. Sounds like you sung it after the fact and not with your playing. No biggie. At 2:36 it sounds like you are yelling. Might be the EQ. I didn’t read the others comments and this might be mentioned. This just needs refinement. Going to be great. congrats

Sincerely

Paul

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Hey Paul, thanks for your comment :slight_smile:

I also thought that it was like yelling. But according to my teacher it isn’t :s lol. Guess I should trust him then, or get another one, I dunno :smiley:
It took some time to get used to it, cause I thought this hasn’t much to with singing, at least that’s what it sounded like to me in the beginning. Maybe the fx’s exaggerate it a bit as well, dunno.

Greetings!
Jelle

I would say it’s “belting”, a head voice with vocal compression power. The only thing on your track is you probably need to pull back from the mic when you do it so the volume is more equal with other singing parts, or bring down the volume with vocal automation on that part when mixing. I posted something with belting here (belting is near the end of the 2.5 minutes):

http://indierecordingdepot.com/t/male-voice-hitting-a-c7/1329/14?u=stan_halen&source_topic_id=1339
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Sounds good. Keep up the work and you will keep improving. I hope we will get to hear more from you soon

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Hey Stan,

Thanks for the comment!
Yeah I would say its somewhere in between. Cause I don’t feel my voice flip to what Paul describes as falsetto. I can do that as well, but that feels totally different, and has less volume. I don’t know, I’m not yet used enough to singing this register. I used to fail at it, but true those lessons found this way to reach it without hurting my voice. I guess I just gotta keep training :smiley:

Next lesson we’re gonna start of vocal fx. The goal is to learn how to grunt and scream :smiley: :smiley: :smiley: That’s gonna be real fun ! More on that later. I’ll check out your link later, cause the wife requires some quality time. We’re together 3y today :stuck_out_tongue: hehe

See ya !

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Thanks mate :slight_smile:

I am definitely planning on doing that ! thanks for the support :slight_smile:

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A few things that stick out to me: the vocal hurts my ears a bit; I think it’s either too loud, or just that certain frequencies are too loud. There’s also a sort of nasal quality that I think I’m hearing. (I could be wrong!) One trick I use for that is to sing normally, then plug up my nose while singing and see if the sound changes at all, with the goal being for there to be no sound change. I don’t hear a lot of chest voice. Maybe it’s the EQ? The tone could use more warmth I think. I didn’t notice that you listed any reverb or delay plugins on the track either–that would help glue it to the mix. If you don’t want to hear it, try a bit of delay. The reverb is often more noticeable, from my experience. (Which sometimes you want and sometimes you don’t.)

But yeah, I hope that makes sense. I like the song!

Hey Christina, thanks for the comment :slight_smile:

This recording/mix sucks, I know :stuck_out_tongue: But it really wasn’t my concern with this upload. I really wanted to get it over with, and get it out there (as in me singing).
I AM going to take all the advice into account though, the next time I go for it, so that the mix is also a little bit on the pleasing side :smiley:

Greets !

Great song lead vocal I think is a bit to up front them whoo parts are over powering the track. The drums sound great but too far back in the mix I want to hear them when they kick in.

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Its actually just an instrumental track from youtube :stuck_out_tongue: Just used it as a backing track, so I cant alter the mix of the instruments :slight_smile:

If some one is up for it to do a complete cover of the song, I’m always willing to do it. I think I can get a better performance done with a bit more practicing.

Greets